The Aztecs

by Michael E Smith

  The Nahuas under Spanish Rule

  The Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples was carried out for both economic and religious objectives. The conquerors initially sought gold (they “lusted for it like pigs”16), and later the colonists and the crown exploited Indian labor in silver mines and in agricultural endeavors. The Conquest was also conducted in the name of God, with missionizing and conversion as major goals. Consequently the two institutions with the greatest immediate effect on people were the encomienda (a grant of land and native labor made to an influential Spaniard), which organized Indian labor for economic gain, and the church. I am switching here to the term “Nahuas” to describe the Aztecs and their descendants after the Spanish Conquest, following the suggestion of ethnohistorian James Lockhart.17 Central Mexican civilization as described in chapters 1 through 11 was greatly transformed after 1521, and I hesitate to use the term “Aztec” for the modified Colonial-period culture. This should not obscure the great continuity in many aspects of culture, particularly those related to the Nahuatl language. I use the term “Indian” to refer to native peoples after 1521, both Nahuas and others.

  After 1521, boatloads of colonists began to arrive from Spain. Mesoamerica became a Spanish colony known as Nueva España, or New Spain, and its capital, Mexico City, was built over the ruins of Tenochtitlan. New Spanish towns and cities were founded throughout central Mexico, usually on the sites of existing Aztec towns. Some Spaniards moved to rural estates to become holders of encomiendas, but most remained in urban areas. As mining and sugarcane cultivation were established, the colonial economy of New Spain boomed, attracting ever more colonists. A few of the Nahua nobility learned Spanish and became involved in the colonial economy, but most of the Nahua people who were not killed off by disease remained in their native communities and continued to speak Nahuatl. They were now subjects of the Spanish empire, which replaced the Aztec Empire, and were rapidly adopting the Christian religion of their conquerors. Nevertheless, in many respects, life continued much as it had before the Spanish Conquest.

  The Encomienda

  By 1521 the dust had settled on the ruins of the Aztec Empire and the remaining Nahuas began a process of accommodation to new masters. The encomienda was a key institution of the Early Colonial period.18 The Spanish crown had experienced earlier problems with encomiendas in the Caribbean, with the encomenderos assuming too much power and independence from the crown. Fearing that this would happen in New Spain as well, the crown forbade the establishment of the encomienda system there. But just as he had ignored Velásquez's order to halt his initial expedition, Hernando Cortés ignored the crown's wishes and proceeded to distribute encomiendas as rewards to his soldiers and associates. Once started, the institution received the support of the crown and soon spread throughout Spanish areas of Mesoamerica.

  The Indians assigned to an encomienda were required to provide goods and labor service to the encomendero, whose responsibility it was to protect them and to see to their religious conversion. The goods paid to the encomendero usually consisted of daily necessities. For example, in the 1540s one Spaniard was provided daily with the following goods: 3 chickens, a load and a half of maize, 200 chilis, a loaf of salt, 12 loads of fodder, pine pitch, a load of charcoal, 12 loads of firewood, and the labor of 8 Nahua servants. The Indians' obligations went far beyond supplying provisions, however. Their heaviest burden was labor, either on agricultural estates or in mines.

  Although the encomienda system was a highly exploitative means of controlling Indian labor, it had the effect of permitting Nahua local government and customs to continue under Spanish rule. Encomiendas were almost always allocated along the lines of preexisting political units. In most cases, an entire altepetl (city-state) was given to an encomendero, and many aspects of the pre-Hispanic altepetl organization (such as the office of tlatoani and the calpolli system) continued to operate for more than a century after the Spanish Conquest. These Colonial-period altepetl did not fight wars nor sponsor sacrificial ceremonies, but regulated land allocations and mobilized taxes much as they had done in earlier times.19

  As the sixteenth century wore on, waves of epidemics continued to wash over Mesoamerica. In 1531 measles swept through the land, followed by an unidentified disease in 1532, and yet another smallpox epidemic in 1538. The deadliest epidemic hit in the years 1545–1548, when typhus wiped out 60 percent or more of the Nahua inhabitants of central Mexico. It was followed by a mumps epidemic in 1550, another unknown disease in 1559–1560, a second round of measles in 1563–1564, and typhus once again in 1576–1580. By that time the Nahua population in the Valley of Mexico numbered only 200,000 people, a reduction of 88 percent from the size of the 1519 population. The decline in the Nahua population had reached its nadir.

  The Church

  The conversion of native peoples to Christianity was a fundamental goal of Spain's conquest and colonization of Mesoamerica.20 Well-educated Spanish friars of the mendicant orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians) were soon sent from Spain to attend to the religious conversion and welfare of the Nahuas and other peoples. Mass baptisms of thousands of individuals were carried out, and within a few decades of the Conquest, most Nahuas had been converted. The friars quickly realized that their preaching would be far more effective if delivered in Nahuatl (and other native languages), and so they learned the language and trained Nahua assistants and scribes to help them. Friars Sahagún, Durán, and others began the systematic study of Aztec religion in order to better understand people's beliefs and to enable the priests to convert the Nahuas and to save their souls more successfully. Priests became the partisans and protectors of the Indians against their overexploitation by Spanish encomenderos and crown officials, and the Nahuas welcomed priests into their communities.

  Churches were built throughout central Mexico, many associated with large convents and monasteries (figure 13.6). Like the great temple-pyramids of the Aztecs, these massive structures served not only as places of worship but also as symbols of the power and glory of God, deliberately built to impress the Indians.21 A typical pattern in Nahua towns was to tear down the pyramid and erect a church on the elevated platform made by the rubble. This practice sent a strong message that the Christian God was supreme and was to be worshiped in place of Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, and the rest. From the perspective of the Nahuas, the placement of the church on top of the former pyramid created continuity in the location and significance of sacred space. Indian communities took pride in their churches, which became symbols of local identity in New Spain. The Spaniards even built a church on top of the largest pyramid of ancient Mesoamerica, the artificial mountain of Cholula (figure 13.7). This pre-Aztec pyramid had been abandoned several centuries before the Spanish Conquest, but Cholula had remained a holy city, and the friars were particularly concerned to make it a Christian city.

  Figure 13.6 Sixteenth-century Christian church and convent at Xochimilco (photograph by Louise Burkhart; reproduced with permission)

  Figure 13.7 Church built on top of the abandoned Cholula pyramid, an artificial mountain (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  The friars encouraged the policy of congregación, designed by the Spanish colonial administration to gather together scattered Nahua settlements into new, larger towns with churches. The resulting congregaciones were partly a response to the continuing Nahua population decline of the sixteenth century. Gathering the Indians together in one place made it easier to preach to them, easier to protect them from overexploitation, and to the colonial officials, easier to collect imperial and encomienda taxes.

  The Nahuas were quick to become nominal Christians, but did not entirely abandon the ways of their former religion:

  they did not undergo a conversion experience, in the sense of responding to a personal spiritual crisis by consciously and intentionally replacing one entire belief system with another . . . [Aztec religion] was more a matter of collective, community rites and celebratio
ns than of an individualized, personal faith . . . The native people interpreted Christianity in terms that were more or less compatible with their own cultures.22

  The Nahuas did not have the concept of a “faith” or “religion” as a domain separable from the rest of culture, and their new religion is best seen as a syncretism or blend of Aztec beliefs and Christian beliefs. Conversion involved the adoption of essential Christian rites and practices, while the basic mind-set remained that of traditional Nahua culture. Rather than passively accepting a completely new and foreign religion, people created their own adaptation of Christianity, compatible with their colonial situation and with many of their traditional beliefs and values. Some of the early priests recognized the partial nature of these conversions, lamenting that in place of a thousand gods, the Indians now had a thousand and one. The pervasive influence of Nahua beliefs on central Mexican Christianity continues today and many aspects of modern folk Catholicism can be traced back to the Aztec past.23 The syncretism of the Nahua and Spanish religions received concrete expression in the incorporation of Aztec religious symbols and objects into sixteenth-century churches and convents (figures 13.8, 13.9).

  Figure 13.8 Carving in the Augustinian convent at Acolman, ca. 1550 (drawing by Richard Perry; reprinted with permission from Perry 1992:45)

  Figure 13.9 Aztec sacred stone box set into the wall of the Dominican convent at Yautepec, ca. 1550. This box is used for holy water today (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  Continuity and Change

  What were the effects of the Spanish Conquest on Aztec civilization? Clearly some things, such as human sacrifice, were eliminated immediately, whereas others, such as the Nahuatl language, have survived to the present day. Aztec imperial institutions and practices were the first to go. The Aztec Empire ceased to exist in 1521, native warfare came to an end, the imperial trade and tax systems closed down, and the outward signs of state religion were quickly suppressed.

  Traditional patterns of community life, on the other hand, endured for several centuries in many rural areas. James Lockhart's research with Nahuatl-language documents shows that the altepetl was allowed to carry on within the framework of the encomienda and colony, serving as a powerful force for the preservation of Nahua culture and practices. Within the Colonial-period altepetl, Nahuatl was still spoken and the calpolli remained the dominant unit of settlement.24 Change came only gradually, with many practices continuing through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  For the peasants in the field it may have made little difference whether they were subjects of Motecuhzoma II of Tenochtitlan or Philip II of Spain. Men and women still produced goods for their family, for their altepetl, and for a distant foreign overlord. They remained tied to the land, rarely venturing far from their village, and social life revolved around the calpolli and altepetl, not some distant imperial city. These peasants were the carriers of the Mesoamerican cultural tradition. It was through their lives and actions, not the lives of nobles or priests, that many aspects of Aztec culture were maintained despite the great upheaval of the Spanish Conquest.

  This basic continuity in peasant life explains the seemingly odd situation found by archaeologists at rural Nahua sites of the Early Colonial period. Although the Spanish Conquest initiated the most dramatic and catastrophic cultural changes ever to occur in Mesoamerica, there is little direct evidence of it at rural sites. People continued to build the same types of houses, and continued to make and use traditional household goods, such as unglazed Aztec orange pottery and obsidian tools, for more than a century after 1521. Goods from Europe, or whose manufacture used new European technologies, such as glazed ceramics and iron nails, do not appear at rural sites until after 1650. This situation contrasts sharply with that of urban areas where the introduction of Spanish material items was rapid.25

  At first, new Spanish traits were simply incorporated into preexisting Nahua cultural patterns. In the words of James Lockhart:

  In the economic realm as in the others, a strong indigenous base continued to provide the framework while Spanish items and modes quickly entered everywhere, not so much displacing as infiltrating, interpenetrating, and being assigned to niches already existing in the indigenous cultural scheme.26

  Change eventually did come to peasant villages, however. Spanish replaced Nahuatl and Otomi as the dominant language in most areas, although in isolated communities Nahuatl has survived. Spanish practices and culture gradually infiltrated Nahua villages, while Nahua practices had their own impact on the new Colonial culture of New Spain. Considerable intermarriage between Indians and Spaniards took place and, by the time of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, most if not all Nahuas were of partial Spanish ancestry. Today Mexican culture is a true blend of Aztec traits, Spanish traits, and traits developed during the four and a half centuries of colonial and national rule. Similarly, the Mexican people are mestizos, their genetic heritage a combination of Indian and Spanish traits, with some African, Asian, and other European genes contributing as well. The Spanish Conquest may have put an end to the Aztec Empire and it may have brought about the deaths of millions of people, but it did not extinguish Nahua culture. Today there are over one million Nahua Indians who speak Nahuatl, and Mexican national culture owes much of its distinctiveness and heritage to the contributions of Aztec civilization.

  The Aztec Legacy: Modern Nahua Indian Culture

  The category “Indian” in Mexico was invented with the arrival of Hernando Cortés in 1519. At first, the term was used to refer to the natives: Aztecs, Mayas, Zapotecs, and many other peoples who were culturally and biologically distinct from the invading Spaniards. As the Colonial period proceeded with its extensive genetic and cultural mixing, “Indian” came to be a social rather than a racial category. Today in Mexico, an “Indian” is someone who speaks a native language and lives in rural poverty.27 Anthropologist Judith Friedlander has lived in the traditional Nahua village of Hueyapan, Morelos, and describes the nature of Indian identity as follows:

  Contemporary [Nahua] Indians have been placed in a contradictory position: while being preserved as living tribute to Mexico's noble indigenous past, they are also being discriminated against for being Indians in a Mestizo-oriented society . . . To be Indian in Hueyapan is to have a primarily negative identity. Indian-ness is more a measure of what the villagers are not or do not have vis-à-vis the hispanic elite than it is of what they are or have . . . [To the villagers of Hueyapan], to be Indian, in other words, signified primarily that you were poor.28

  Although characterized by the preservation of the Nahuatl language and rural poverty, Nahua Indian villages today also conserve many traditional practices that can be traced back to the Aztecs, most prominently in the sphere of domestic material culture. For example, when peasants construct traditional adobe-brick houses today, they often employ techniques and materials identical to those used by their Aztec ancestors five centuries ago (figure 13.10).29 Traditional diet and food in modern Nahua villages exhibit many continuities with Aztec times. Maize and beans are still the mainstay of the diet, with tomatoes, avocados, chili peppers, and squash as important supplements. Today most villagers buy their tortillas ready-made from a special bakery called a tortillería, although on special occasions women still take out the metate and comalli to make tortillas by hand.30

  Figure 13.10 A farmer in the village of Tetlama, Morelos, builds the stone foundation for a traditional-style house of adobe bricks. The resulting foundation walls are almost indistinguishable from nearby Aztec peasant house foundations; see figure 6.4 (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  Even in the most conservative Indian household, however, European-derived foods play a major role. Rice, onions, beef, pork, and chicken have become deeply embedded parts of traditional cuisine. The principle feast dish today, mole, can be traced back to the Aztecs (the name is from molli, which means “sauce” in Nahuatl), but many of the ingredients of modern mole are derived from European cuisine, not Aztec. The
example of diet is illustrative of the general situation in which Indian culture is an intermingling of Aztec and European traits. Cultural features or customs that are viewed as “traditionally Indian” today cannot necessarily be traced back to the pre-Hispanic past.31

  Handwoven textiles are another example of a modern Indian tradition derived from both Aztec and Spanish origins. In Hueyapan, for example, women still spin thread by hand and weave cloth with a backstrap loom (figure 13.11) virtually identical to that used by the Aztecs (see figure 4.4). Although the technology is pre-Hispanic, the fiber they work is wool, not cotton or maguey, and the clothing they make conforms to Spanish, not indigenous, traditions.32

  Figure 13.11 A modern Nahua woman, Doña Epifania of Hueyapan, Morelos, weaves cloth on a traditional backstrap loom. She is dressed in the traditional skirt and blouse of Hueyapan women (photograph by Judith Friedlander; reproduced from Friedlander 2006:84, with permission of Palgrave MacMillan)

  The modern Nahua Indian peoples of Mexico are not Aztecs living in the twentieth century. The blending of Aztec and Spanish cultures was a process in which people adopted some new traits and rejected others, just as they maintained some ancient practices and abandoned others. Modern village culture is not merely a static mixture of Aztec and medieval Spanish traits, however; it too has been evolving for several hundred years. The Nahua peoples have created their own dynamic, unique culture, and continue to create it today, by meeting new challenges with the resources and knowledge available to them, of whatever origin. Some Nahuas have become completely integrated into the national culture, and others have kept to themselves in isolated villages. But in both Indian villages and Mexico City, much of the distinctive flavor of modern Mexican culture derives from the Aztec past.